No Love from Google or Yahoo

[Dural]

Two months after launch, I'm completely indexed by MSN and Google, but I'm only getting traffic from the MSN. I rank number one for "flipping houses" and number eight for "real estate investment." Combined, they send me about 30-40 uniques per day.

But I get nothing from Yahoo and next to nothing from Google. Why? I've heard about the Google sandbox, and I'm guessing I'm in it. My site is the best resource on the Internet for flipping houses, but I can't find it in the first few pages.

An article I wrote called "Flipping Houses is like Being Gay" and submitted to searchwarp shows up on the second page of Google for "flipping houses." I'm guessing they have more trustrank and that's why it's showing up?

Also, I'm getting NOTHING from Yahoo. Are they just slow or have I done something to anger the Yahoo gods?

Anyway... am I just being impatient or is there something I can do to get more attention from Yahoo and Google?

I have a series of five articles with backlinks coming up in realtytimes.com, a magazine that's been online since 1997 and has about 600,000 monthly visitors. I'm hoping some of their trustrank will rub off on me. But will it be enough?

[Henny]

Sounds to me like you need more backlinks, and quality ones. You may want to submit your site to a bunch of directories. Also, I would pony up for some quality links.

[Doug]

It took me quite a while to get Strange-Facts on the first page of google for a search for strange facts. Then it bounced between page 1 and page 2 for about 3 months but now it seems to be there for good. It took almost a year though. I was slow and didn't work on or promote my sites much. You should be able to do it in a fraction of the time it took me if you are more diligent than I was.

[Dural]

I've already submitted to 100 directories. I guess I could do 100 more. Congratulations on Strange Facts, Doug. With over 100 million competitors, "real estate investment" is a little more competitive though. So, you basically waited for the site to age?

[Doug]

Thanks for the congrats. I guess that's what happened as far as I can tell. I think google likes older sites. I could be way off base though. You are right about real estate investment, there is more competition. If the content is good though you should make it in due time.

[Masetek]

I've already submitted to 100 directories. I guess I could do 100 more. Congratulations on Strange Facts, Doug. With over 100 million competitors, "real estate investment" is a little more competitive though. So, you basically waited for the site to age?

100 is not enough. Although directory backlinks are crappy quality they still count. Ive got a few sites doing ok off directory backlinks only. My sig has a whole heap of seo friendly dirs.

But you really need to get quality backlinks. Maybe buy some and see if you can exchange homepage links with a few sites. Homepage links will bring you traffic and PR. You might wanna just go for the small/medium site though, because I doubt a well established site owner would be up for it.

Ive never had any trouble with google, but I have NEVER has any traffic from yahoo. My oldest site is about 10 months old and gets about 28k/month uniques from mainly google and yahoo sends about 50 of that! Wierd. Its the same with all my sites though.

[Doug]

Ive never had any trouble with google, but I have NEVER has any traffic from yahoo.

Same here. Mainly google, some msn, and hardly any yahoo.

[Masetek]

I get 10 times as much traffic from AOL than yahoo! :goof:

[Dural]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll do another 100 directories. Only costs $11 per hundred from a guy on DP. He submits them manually.

High-quality links? I probably need to stop messing around and start a viral campaign. I've got two ideas that should land me a couple hundred nice links.

Buying text links from related sites is rather expensive. Real Estate Journal costs $2200 per month. The cheapest high-quality link I've found is around $400 per month.

What do you think about hiring someone to go through and ask for links from all of the sites that link to my competitors? One guy on DP charges about four dollars per link. Might be worth $400 for 100 links from "hub" sites.

[Shawn]

Dural,

I can get you links on the major city newspaper websites (major authority sites) for less than $100 a month. Send me a PM if you're interested.